Flat-panel televisions have increased in popularity in recent years and have become the new standard for television viewing. Due to their thin design, various brackets and frames have been created that allow a TV to be mounted to walls or other surfaces. This can be beneficial, as it doesn't require a TV stand or other cumbersome piece of furniture to be used in conjunction with the TV. This can be especially useful when a room has limited floor space. With that, several brackets exist, including fixed brackets and pivoting brackets (rotation may be pivotal or hinged). Pivoting brackets can be useful for when a user needs or desires to change the viewing angle of the screen. Typically, with pivoting brackets, a user will position the TV where desired, and then when done viewing, will return the TV proximate to the wall. As such, the brackets are not spring-loaded and are not typically controlled by electronics; rather, they are simply manually actuated brackets—a user simply pulls on the TV to adjust it to the desired position. Because of this, it is impractical to mount a TV on a ceiling using one of these brackets, as the TV would remain extended from the ceiling. As such, mounting the TV to a fixed position has remained the standard.
Despite the progress in the art of TV brackets for walls, there has been a considerable lack of improvement in ceiling-mounted brackets. Commonly, as mentioned above, if a user desires to mount a TV to a ceiling, the TV must remain in a fixed position. In other words, it remains proximate to, and parallel with, the ceiling, which is not an ideal viewing angle in many situations. The prior art has attempted to solve this problem (for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,416,027 to Hart), but due to the cumbersome equipment involved, complicated components, or other issues, the prior art devices have not had market success. Therefore, there not only remains a need for a ceiling-mounted TV bracket that allows the TV to remain mounted proximate to, and recessed in, the ceiling, but that also provides the ability to pivot or rotate the TV to additional viewing angles, as desired by a user. The current disclosure seeks to solve these and other problems.